Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1887-07-13
THE NEW AMERICAN.
The Species of Humanity Developed on
the Great Plains of the West.


WORTH in the Great West. He is more
free and timber there, and unfolds
those generous peculiarities and large@
lnesses of humanity which never bios
somed before. The environment
has much to do with it. The great
spaces over which he roams contribute
to tina enlargement of his mental hori-
zon. There have been races before
who roamed the illimitable desert, but
they travelled on foot OF on camel-back,
and were limited in their range. There
was nothing continental about them,
as there is about our railway desert
travellers, who swing along through
thousands of miles of sand and sage
bush with a growing contempt for
time and space. But expansive and
greatas thesepeople have become under
the new conditions, the Drawer has a
fancy that the development of the race
has only just begun, and that the future
will show us in perfection kind OF
man new to the world. Out some
where on the Santa Fe route, where
the desert of one day was like the des-
ert of the day before, and the Pullman
car rolls and swings over the wide
waste beneath the blue sky day after
day, under it's black flag of smoke, in
the early gray of morning, when the
men were waiting their turns at the
ablution bowls, a slip of q boy, per-
haps aged seven, stood balancing HIM
self on his little legs, clad in knicke1-
bockers, biding his time, with all the
nonchalance of an old campaigner.
'How did you sleep, Cap?" asked
a wen-meaning elderly gentleman.
well, thank you," was the dignifed
response; "as [ always do on q
sleeping-car. Always doesP Great
horrors! Hardly out of his swaddling-
clothes, and yet he always sleeps well
in sleeper! Was he born on the
wheelsP was he Graded in q Pullman?
He has always been in motion, proba-
bly,; he was started at thirty miles an
hour, no doubt, this marvellous boy of
our new era. He was not born in a
house at rest, but the locomotive
snatehed him along with shrek and
q roar before his eyes were fairly open,
and he was rocked in section and
his first sensation of life was that of
moving rapidly over vast arid spaces,
through cattle ranges, and along can
yons. The effort of quick and easy To-
comotion on character may have been
noted before, but it seems thlt here is
the production of new sort of man,
the direct product of our railway era.
1t is not simply that this boy is mature,
but he must be a different and a no.
bier sort of boy than one born, say, at
home on a canal-boat; for whether
he was born on the rail or not, he be-
longs to the railway system of civiliza-
ton. Before he gets into trousers he
is old in experience, and he has dis
counted many of the novelties that usu-
ally break gradually on the pilgrim in
this world He belongs to the new, ex-
pansive race that must live in motion,
whose proper home is the Pullman
(Which will probably be improved in
time into a dustless, sweet-smelling
wel-aired bedroom), and whose do
nestle life will be on the wing, SO to
speak. The Interstate commerce bill
will pass him along without friction
from end to end of the Union, and per-
haps uniform divorce law will
enable him to change his mar
ital relations at any place where
he happens to dine. This promising
lad is only q faint intimation Of what
we are all coming to when we fully &C.
quire the freedom of the continent, and
come into that eXpansiveness of feel
ing and of language which character
ICES the Great West. 1t is a burst of
Joyous exuberance that comes from the
sense of an illimitable horizon. It
shows itself in the tender words of d
local newspaper at Bowie, Ariz., on
the death of a beloved citizen: "'Death
loves shining mark, and she hit a
dandy when she turned loose on Jim. y
And also in the closing words of New
Mexico obituary, which the Kansas
Magazine quotes: ''Her tired spirit
was released from the pain
racking body and scared aloft
to eternal glory at 4:30 Denver
time We die, as it were, in motion,
and we sleep, and there is nowhere any
boundary to our expansion. Perhaps
we shall never again know any rest as
we now understand the term-rest
being only change of motion-and we
shall not be able to sleep except on the
cars, and whether we die by Denver
time or by the ninetieth meridian, we
shall only change our time. Blessed
be this slip of boy who is man be-
fore he is an infant, and teaches us
what rapid transit can do for our race!
The only thing that can possibly him
der us in our progress will be second
childhood; we have abolished first
Charles Dudley Warner, IN Harper s
Magazine.
Americas Gretna Green.